Does Pope Francis need to rethink improvisational management?

Crux, 2 March 2017

The resignation of the lone remaining survivor of clerical abuse from Pope Francis's anti-abuse commission raises questions about the pontiff's improvisational management style. If he really can't get what he wants from the Vatican bureaucracy, is it maybe time to try a different way of getting it?

The resignation of Marie Collins from the papal sexual abuse commission might have been inevitable, and even desirable, as John Allen argues. Perhaps. But it is also a significant challenge for Pope Francis in his management of the Roman Curia.

Collins’s comments upon her resignation, in an explanatory column for the National Catholic Reporter and even more so in her statements to Crux, were exculpatory of the Holy Father and the commission itself; the villains of the piece were anonymous entrenched interests in the Roman curia.

Which is likely true, but also rather too convenient; it’s always easier to blame the bureaucracy than the principals.